Happy 2020! I’m late…but that’s okay! Sometimes things happen at our own pace (well always). This year I’m hoping to write more as a resolution, so I’m brining the blog back to life! And I’ve also decided to start a newsletter. Maybe two things is a little ambitious, but it’s still January, so let’s be ambitious.
Newsletter: Subscribe HERE
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year’s Eve and is excited for 2018. May it be better than 2017. My goals and resolutions are still the same, but I thought I would begin the year off with 31 days of gratitude in January. I get so caught up in what I want that sometimes I forget what I’m grateful for.
Gratitude of the Day: The New Year!
I’m grateful for it being January 1st. While I’m always striving to be a better version of myself, I’ve taken the last few days to rest and reflect on 2017 and to realign myself and my life with my goals both big and small.
Until tomorrow.
204 days to go!
I was listening to Happier with Gretchen Rubin and a listener suggested that instead of (or in addition to) a New Year’s resolution, you have a list of both fun things you want to do and things you want to improve upon. So 18 in 2018 was born! 2018 is just around the corner, so here’s my list below!
Fly fishing
Go to Portland
Go to a new Museum
Go to Germany & Denmark
Sequoia National Park
Advance to next ballet level
Pay off credit card debt
Get agent for book
Work on Capsule wardrobe
Floss every day
Wear more lipstick
Take Piano lessons
Sign up for a club (look on meetup)
Begin Meditating
Eat Breakfast every day
Go to the doctor
Read more poetry
Fall in Love
So there it is! It has everything. Trips overseas (Germany) and trips in the US (Portland), trying new things (piano lessons), and trying to do things I’ve been trying to do forever(ballet!). Things that seem hard, but are easy to do (going to the doctor) and things that are easy in theory, but hard in practice (falling in love). Let’s see how many I can get done. Updates will follow!
Eek! It’s already been 35 days since I started this blog and I feel like I haven’t made much progress. I’ve made a bit, but not as much as I wish. Still I went to ballet class this weekend and I’ve been writing pretty consistently. But I want to have done more!
One of the main problems I have with myself is that I can never live up to my fantasy self. You know the one? The one who eats healthily and jumps up at the sound of her alarm to write. The one who exercises regularly. The one who writes like she’s running out of time. The one who is always in a good mood at work and ready to help. The one who is ambitious, but not too ambitious to be slytherin-like. 😛
I call her my fantasy self and sometimes I feel so, so far from her.
She’s who I want to be; the person I’m striving to be with this blog. Too often I fall short, but that’s not such a bad thing, is it? To have something to strive for? To aim to be the person I want to be. To reach beyond who I currently am?
No, I think it’s a good thing, but I also have to remember to forgive myself when I fall short. Tomorrow is another day to live up to my ideal person, but it’s okay if I skipped writing for one day because I was just too tired from my job which pays my rent. It’s okay if I skip yoga one day because I’d rather lay in bed and drink coffee. It’s okay to not be perfect all the time, to not be my fantasy self (she is a fantasy after all). It’s okay to fail as long as I make a note and course correct. And then there are the days I succeed – the days I align who I am with who I want to be – even if it’s only one moment at a time.
So back on track! Still dog sitting and still tired, but I’m back on track for now. And I’m sure I’ll miss a day tomorrow or next week, but for now I am here and I am writing.
And that’s pretty much the secret to my editing success. Originally I would set a timer for one minute and then write, write, write and then after sixty seconds I was done. You really can do anything for a minute. While it was tempting to do more than one minute, I get easily deterred and discouraged if I did half an hour the day before, but couldn’t manage it the next day. But I can do one minute every day – squeeze it in before I go to work, while I’m cooking or right before I go to bed. Easy peasy. And then suddenly you have a habit.
I’ve slowly been upping the amount of time I edit, so at the moment I’m at seven minutes. It doesn’t seem like a lot (and it’s not really), but something is better than nothing. I’m chipping away at the pages of my book slowly, but surely – one minute at a time.
I was driving to work this week and for some reason it dawned upon me that I don’t particularly like my life. Sure, it’s fine, but there’s very few things I do on a day to day basis that I enjoy. Reading, watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, writing in my journal. Those are all fun (solitary) things, which enjoy, but the life I currently lead is vastly different from the life I have in my head. (Maybe not vastly, but some hyperbole is allowed.)
So I’ve decided to change my life. Today is (music swells) the first day of the rest of my life. And a Sunday to boot, so how fortuitous – unless you think the week starts on on Monday.
But, back to changing my life. This day next year, I want my life to be closer to what I want. Closer to who I want to be. So here’s what I want.
So there we have it. The things I really want out of the next year. Of course, there’s tons of other things I want to do as well: learn French, how to fly a plane, go on a trip, learn to play the piano. But those are other things for other days and other years and right now I’ll just focus on these. Maybe on July 23, 2018 I can put some of those on my list.
Until tomorrow.
I knew this would happen! It’s why I stopped watching TV in the first place, but Master of None came out (amazing), then Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (better than good), and then I discovered Veep (truly excellent). For the longest time I wasn’t watching TV because I knew once I found something I wanted to watch, I wouldn’t do anything else. And now I’ve opened a can of worms.
Building new habits is a hard thing to do. I’ve managed to build small ones like flossing every day (pair it with brushing my teeth!) and doing my DuoLingo French (with my coffee in the morning), but anything which requires more time and energy is kind of a struggle. I know myself and I know that pairing works and pure willpower doesn’t. I know that making things into tiny blocks instead of one big block helps me get the most done, even if my pace is slower than a snail’s.
I know I don’t have enough will power to stop watching Veep in the middle of the series, so I’ll just try my best to not watch it until the weekend. After it’s done, I’ll cut the cord again and I’ll be back on track with all my goals (more to come!)
(But…..if you haven’t you should watch Veep)
For the past few years I’ve been taking ballet classes off and on. Adult ballet classes. I never took them as a child, but I always wanted too. I remember at a young age asking my one ballet friend all about class and performances and what being part of a production was like. To me it just seemed like magic. Even as a teenager, I looked for adult classes I might be able to join. Sadly, there weren’t any in my area.
Then one day a few years ago I suddenly realized – I’m an adult and I can do whatever I want, whenever I want (for the most part, as I am very law-abiding and rule oriented). So I signed up for a beginner class! By myself. It was scary doing something new and all alone, but I loved it! It’s been a few years since I took that beginner class and so I want to get back in the saddle (or rather in the shoes). I’ve been having trouble making it to class for the last year or so and I want this blog to be some sort of accountability. I know I’ll never dance on stage, but I’d at least like to make it into pointe shoes! At least once.
They say you need 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Maybe I’ll never make it there, but I want to get as close as I can. (I even have a tracker on my phone. It’s called Mastery.) So here’s to the start of 10,000 hours and some sort of accountability. And practice. Lots and lots of practice. I’ll update my progress along the way with some other blog posts thrown in about things I love. This is – after all – a blog about finding things in life which bring me joy, however small.
xoxo
Well, maybe not Joy with a capital J or even lowercase joy, but somewhere in the area of contentedness. I realized recently that I don’t really enjoy my life. Not that it’s bad, but just that there’s very few things I am currently looking forward to and very few things I feel energized about it. It’s mostly running from one place to the next and sometimes even dreading the next activity I’ve planned for myself. So this will be a small journey in reclaiming my life for what I want it to be. Full of joy…or contentedness…or at least having some things to look forward to.
Petite Joy 